1. Field of the Present Invention
The present invention relates to a biometric authentication device for authenticating an individual by utilizing biometric information of human being.
2. Description of the Related Art
At the present, a method of employing a code number PIN (Personal Identification Number) stored in a magnetic card, an IC card, etc. exists as a method of authenticating a specified individual in drawing from a bank account, purchasing a commercial article and entering/exiting a facility. In this type of individual authentication method, however, if a card and a code number are stolen, a third party might easily break into the individual information.
Such being the case, over the recent years, with an increase in internal storage capacity of the IC card, there ha s been proposed a method of authenticating the individual by use of individual biometric information such as a fingerprint, an iris, a retina, a blood vessel image and a voiceprint.
As t he method of authenticating the individual by use of the biometric information, there is proposed a method of authenticating the individual by using the biometric information stored in the IC card (refer to Patent documents “JP 2000-293643 A” and “JP 10-312459 A”)
Even the individual authentication method based on the biometric information, however, still has a problem in terms of security. An access to intra-card data of the IC card involves utilizing a terminal for the IC card, however, an authentication program on this terminal can be comparatively easily altered, and hence the individual registration data registered in the IC card might be falsified and stolen by such a vicious program.